An international research team has shown that phonons, the quantum particles behind material vibrations, can be classified using topology, much like electronic bands in materials. This breakthrough could lead to the development of new materials with unique thermal, electrical, and mechanical properties, enhancing our understanding and manipulation of solid-state physics.
The spectrum of phonons—essentially the energy as a function of momentum—and their wave functions, which represent their probability distribution in real space, can be computed using ab initio first principle codes. However, these calculations have so far lacked a unifying principle. “For the quantum behavior of electrons, topology—a branch of mathematics—has successfully classified the electronic bands in materials.
Several phonon structure databases have been meticulously analyzed, revealing that at least half of the materials exhibit at least one non-atomic cumulative phononic band set. The team employed a formalism similar to that developed for characterizing electronic bands, as outlined in their previous work on Topological Quantum Chemistry .
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